I’ve heard rumors all through college about the worst thing that could happen on the first day of school. I don’t mean worst thing like falling down the stairs (it’s happened to me, you get through it) or getting lost (also happened to me). I mean worst thing like, finding out that your professor talks too fast or grades too hard – anything that basically signals to you that your GPA is going to tank because of a particular class. I’ve never experienced this, as my GPA will attest, so I thought that everyone was just really whiny because they decided to pick boring, hard majors and were now regretting it. My favorite worst first day excuse is the ever-popular “my professor doesn’t speak English.” I always thought, mmm-hmm, yes, CSU would definitely hire a professor who barely speaks English, yeah right.

Actually, it’s true. They totally do that. And now, I’m screwed.

Okay, not exactly screwed, I exaggerate (who me? Never!) but only a little. My Comparitive Politics professor is from Turkey, but lived in Finland for awhile too, and now teaches in the states. She has the wonkiest accent I’ve ever heard, and it cracks me up, so much so that I listen to how she says words, not the actual words that she says, which then explains why all I’ve learned so far is that Britain is, in fact, a democracy, despite their insistence on keeping royals with bad hats.

My professor really loves direct object articles (‘a’ or ‘the’ for the grammatically ungeeky) and she is mad about plurals, which is always fun. She also ocassionally spells like she pronounces things, which makes for an interesting activity as well. Bored by the lecture? That’s OK, just use the spare time to decipher the power point from Turkish accented English, into regular English. On the first day of school, she told us that she frequently checks her e-mails and that we shouldn’t bring in foods or drinks, but if we wanted to bring in the water bottles to drink the waters, that would be OK.

I’m pretty excited to go to class tomorrow actually, because when we last left off, we were talking about the Quinn of England, and her relationship with the Margaret Thatchers.